There were many. Sherry, Watson I, Malinga, Thornton, Close I, Benn II, Rocchigiani, Close II, Amaral, Schommer, Collins I, Thompson I. How many do you think he lost, won, drew, etc in your scoring? I think he won every single one of those fights personally, clear enough, with the exception of Schommer, which he lost quite clearly and by a number of rounds. Many are convinced Watson beat him, Thornton beat him, Close beat him in Glasgow, Benn beat him, Rocchigiani beat him and Amaral beat him, in different ways, though it varies...
The thing for me was Eubank's ability to make a man miss, mostly by pulling back out of range at the right moments. You have to score that in his favour - if you don't, he loses all of those above fights. The main reason you score it in his favour is because it almost always followed him landing himself (usually a long sneaky shot, sometimes a short uppercut). He never got hit with retaliation shots, and could even make guys miss by many inches. Then he'd see out a round with ring generalship and controlling the tempo. You always score those rounds for Eubank, unless a guy significantly outworked him in a round and got through with as many as he missed. The close close one could be the Benn II one, due to Benn's elusive defence that night that didn't allow Eubank himself to land clean lead long shots and actually caused Benn to counter him inside with workrate. I still think Eubank edged/cruised the first three rounds and got the better of the exchages in rounds 5, 6 and 12 that night, as well as taking 9 and 11 by getting his jab working. Though Benn won 4, 7, 8, and 10 more clearly than Eubank won a round, but had a point taken away for fouls, too.
Been long time since I've seen most of these fights. Schommer is the obvious one. I believe Eubank said a few years back that getting the decision in that one made him realise just how corrupt boxing could be. From what I remember of the Graziano fight wasn't too contraversial. RG blew the first 4 rounds.
#2 I thought judges scored fights on hitting the target area with the knuckle part of the glove...:think Scoring him up for making his opponent miss...:think only if he counters back witha scoring shot...:yep
The name of the game is hit and not be hit, when you need a decider and you know the champion has made the challenger miss many shots and the challenger hasn't made the champion miss (Eubank missed occasionally through his own technical mistakes!), that's your decider, surely.
Well, the Benn 2 decision was one of the great disgraces. point deduction or not, Benn won that fight by miles. However, Eubank definitely won the first Collins fight for me. Two dreadful decisions.
Not seeing the Amaral one mate... what Eubank didn't make him miss (and that was almost everything), he blocked. Amaral was pretty poor - just wide heavy telegraphed combos in occasional spurts and faded badly down the stretch. Eubank didn't lose any of the first 4-5 - certainly not clearly anyway, and won the last 3-4 clearly.
Going from memory the first fight with Close could have gone either way, the second fight was Eubanks though.
I know these days every remembers Eubank fondly for the Benn/ Watson/ Thompson fights but at the time he had some really boring and poor defences. These days a boxer would get absolutely raped on here if did what Eubank did back then.